of Travels, Cultures & Kicks

Month: May 2012

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I never thought myself as a typical Finn or typical Scandinavian. Unlike the stereotype of a silent Finn I am extremely outgoing and talkative.

Well, in East Finland (where I grew up and where my family comes from) people are more talkative. After 10 years in Southwestern Finland I am willing to state that the Southwestern part lives more up to the reputation of the Finns as Bertol Brecht put it in 1940 during his exile in Finland: “Volk, das in zwei Sprachen schweigt“; “a nation that stays silent in two languages”.

Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish.

When in East Finland, the Southwestern Finns get intimidated when the strangers start talking to them. I must admit, though, that even in the East Finnish scale I’m way over the average talkativeness – but my geographical & genetic origins are a handy excuse in Southwest!

You might easily think the difference is due to the differences between small village vs. big city. But it’s more than that. Last November I participated friends’ birthday party in small Southwestern village. We drove through countryside and forests towards the party locals, winter evening growing dark around us. In front of us we could see the backlights of two cars heading to the same direction. There was no one else to be seen around the village. We all pulled out to the same parking lot, indicated in the party invitation. As everybody got out of the car I greeted the strangers in the other cars: “I guess you’re also heading to X’s place?” One of them answered: “Yes. I think it’s that house over there with the lit lanterns”. I waited for a moment that we would walk to the house together – after all we were going to celebrate our common friends and our hosts would probably want to introduce us to each other. But no. My friends started towards the house as the strangers stayed put at the parking lot. As I followed my friends – all of them from Southwest – they quided me with a mock reproach: “Hey, try to remember we’re in Southwest Finland now: we don’t talk to strangers here!”

For me it would have been such a natural thing to walk to the house together and a small poll among my Eastern friends stated the same. As even the least outgoing of my friends put it: “Well, it could have been awkward and I might not have come up with any small talk. But still I would have walked there together.” But my invitation to walk to the party locals together was interpreted as a question which one of the houses was the right one.

So it’s kind of relief to sometimes notice that I am a true Finn, after all!

Nordic individualism & buying train tickets

If I never thought myself as a typical Finn I definitely didn’t think myself as a Nordic individualist. I have been more like the hippie who lives in a shared apartment even though the student phase of life has already finished and the real job&salary would permit an own apartment.

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So then I arrive to Poland. I’m planning to travel to Ljubljana, by train. I have checked the international train timetables in internet (here). So now I just need to know if I can buy the tickets at the nearby town’s railway station. Bravely I try to call to the station (keep in mind I my Polish is very elementary!). The number I dial is for some kind of railway security services and as I’m trying to stammer something about timetables they just hang up to me.

So I ask a colleague if could she make the call for me. Not so simple as I thought.

First my colleague starts to look information in internet for internet sale of international train tickets. As she can’t find it she tells me she will call a friend whose father works in the Polish railways. The friend will ask her father if it’s possible to buy the tickets in the nearby town. Then next Saturday the friend can come with me to the railway station to buy the tickets. Or, I’m informed, I can just go to the train station and when I start to talk in English everybody will know who I am and what I want and they will have prepared everything for me.

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For a brief moment there I felt like “Would you just make the freaking phone call to the station and if it’s a yes I can just go there this eve and buy the freaking ticket myself?!”

But it was only a brief moment. Of course it was really sweet how everybody was willing to help me. And when I finally went to buy the train ticket with this friend of a friend we went afterwards for lunch and got to know each other a bit. So now I know one more Polish person.

I wanted to offer her the lunch but she insisted on paying it. When I tried to keep my stand “Yes, I will pay!” this quiet young girl took me by surprise by starting yelling “No!” so loudly that I got shocked, and as I didn’t want to disturb the other customers of the small grandmother’s restaurant any more than what I had already done I just whined meakly “Ok then”. My Polish friend informed me, that if you want to pay you should go around at least 3 of these yes-no rounds. And then if you actually manage to pay you should be prepared to face the fact that people will be “mad” to you for paying it.

But this whole ticket buying episode made me realise that such a thing as “Nordic individualism” really exists!

I told about my realisation to a Finnish friend who spent 9 months in Slovakia. Her opinion was that in East Europe you can just forget stuff like that. “Individualism? What is that?”

I‘d say it’s about preferring to make the things yourself instead of relying or believing on somebody else taking care of it. You feel more sure when you know that it’s you who has asked the questions and heard the answers. It might also have something to do with counting on the officials: in Finland even if I knew somebody working at the railways I’d still make the call to the officials. I wouldn’t disturb my friend on his/her freetime with a call about trivial workrelated business.

My Polish friend, who’s been living in Finland some 5 years had the opinion that in Poland the official information is out there, but as it’s hard to find (chaotic websites etc.) the unofficial way is the easier way to find things out. So it’s not about mistrusting the officials (which I guess might be the case in some other countries), it’s about the society working in a different way.

Officials, helpful strangers & buying bus tickets

Which reminds me of my first day in Poland.

I arrive to Warsaw airport and want to take a bus to central railway station. At the bus stop it’s indicated that the tickets can be bought either from the vending machine at the airport or from the bus driver. When I get to the bus

1) the driver is too lazy to sell me a ticket and tells me to use the vending machine in the bus. The machine works only with coins. Having just arrived to the country I only have bills.

2) TWO of the other passangers buy me a ticket: first a young man (who was also trying to buy a tickets from the driver and was rejected as well) and a young woman. The woman doesn’t speak English, so she doesn’t understand when I try to explain that the man already bought me a ticket. An elderly lady sees the whole episode and chuckles. When leaving the buss the young man smiles and wishes me good continuation for my day.

Neither of these two things would have happened in Finland.

Conclusion?

Knowing myself & my culture again a bit better – and feeling myself a bit more Finnish than before.

I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences about individualism, unofficial information and offering lunch in your culture or in the countries you have lived in / visited! Anglo-saxons: Do you recognise yourself in the individualism description?

Following the people updating about the First of May celebration and picnic with friends made me feel a bit homesick. I just love First of May, which in Finland is not only an International Worker’s Day but more Walpurgis Night by English missionary Saint Walburga, canonised on 1 of May (ca. 870) . In Finnish the first of May is called Vappu (also a female name), in Swedish Vappen. I guess Walpurgis Night is celebrated also in Sweden, perhaps also in Norway and Denmark? Iceland?

I consider First of May the only carnival Finland has! It’s a party especially for students and in general to everybody celebrating the spring – a party filled with picnics, balloons, colours, market, little trumpets and other noisy stuff kids can buy from the market, homemade mead and donuts (and with a lot of sparkling wine or other alcohol…)

I made also my own “sima” here in Poland. Here you can’t find the special sugar we use for “sima” (fariinisokeri, a soft mixture of white sugar and dark sugar syrup), so I used demerara sugar instead. The result was a pit paler, but the taste was ok. I also made donuts, but I didn’t have my own recipe with me and the result was not as good as I hoped for…

Ingredients for “sima”. On the background the typical Slavic lace curtain in my kitchen window.

Bottled “sima”

I guess “mead” is the best translation to “sima”, this fermented bubbly drink made of sugar, yeast and lemon – although Finnish “sima” isn’t made of honey and is very low in alcohol, so children drink it as well. I was quite amused to notice that in different language the names for alcoholic honey or sugar drink are probably of same origin.

It’s really easy to make “sima”, it’s a nice, cooling summer drink with a bit of character in it! And if it happened that it would not work out, e.g. you wouldn’t get enough bubbles in it don’t worry: that happens sometimes to even the best cooks!

1. Pour all sugar in the bucket. Boil half of the water, and pour it in the bucket, stir so that the sugar melts. Add freshly squeezed lemon juice. (If you want, you can wash&brush well one or all the lemons, peel and add the skin as well). Add the rest of the water, stir.

2. Take a little bit of water from the bucket in a cup and dissolve the yeast in it. Pour the yeast mixture in the bucket, stir.

3. Let ferment in room temperature for 12-24 h.

4. Bottle the “sima” (: at the bottom of every bottle add 1 teaspoon of sugar. In every bottle add 2-4 raisins. Leave the bottles to ferment either in room temperature for approximately 3 days or in fridge for 1 week. One way to see if the drink is ready is to keep on eye the raisins: when they get up, there’s enough bubbles in your “sima”. However this can also happen before the drink is ready, so wait at least those 3 days/1 week.

If you use plastic bottles you might need to open up the corks a bit every now and then to let the pressure out. I prefer to use rubber corks: I don’t close them too tightly and they just pop off on themselves when the pressure gets too high. Then you just need to find the cork and seal the bottle again…

My first longer period abroad was nine months in France 2004-2005. Studying at university I spent most of my time with other exchange students, with who I made really good friends. But of course I also wanted to stay in contact with friends and family in Finland. Now, when I compare year 2012 to 2004 a lot has changed when it comes to keeping in contact with your close ones.

2004-2005 only a few of us had laptop and even fewer had internet connection at home. This might have also been due to the fact that there was no student housing, we had to find accommodation on our own from private sector. And back then in France it didn’t seem like a simple thing to do to fix an internet connection yourself. Especially if your French wasn’t that fluent. So we were using the computer classes at the university to write emails.

Foreign keyboard, argh!!! Letters might be in different order on the keyboard. It’s hard to find the right punctuation marks as they are situated in different place on the keyboard. Punctuation mark and sometimes even number might have different shift key function that what you’re used to… but during those 9 months I got used to the French keyboard. And when I got back home I had to find some time to get to know the Finnish one again…

It used to be really exotic to get email from your friends abroad: foreign keyboards don’t normally have the Finnish alphabet “ä” or “ö”. Of course you could type the dots separately but no one bothers do that… So you just write those letters without dots.

But now…I have my own familiar laptop, so comfortable! My written Finnish is perfect! No cultural shocks regarding the keyboard … but for the rare moments when I need to use laptop or computer at my work, in a hostel etc.

At the time Facebook didn’t yet exist. So we wrote emails. In that computer class which wasn’t open during the weekends.

Now, following my friend’s status updates or chatting away a bit while working on my laptop I’m wondering if I’m detaching from Finland at all – I was even a bit worried that I’d only stay in my “Finnish bubble” instead of plunging into the Polish culture. Well, luckily that didn’t happen (I’m living in a small town and the Polish people (at least in small towns) are really hospitable inviting one for dinner or tea).

Real letters! I’d say during my year in France even half of my correspondence with my friends was through old-fashioned snail mail letters! (But my friends and relatives are writing snail mail more than average person, I guess). Even nowadays I’m sometimes exchanging letters with my friends (living abroad) and sometimes with my family as well. I really like snail mail, letters especially!

It’s more personal: you see the characteristic handwriting of someone who thought about you.

It’s more creative: you can sketch the floor plan of your new flat (got one letter like that that) or draw a mind map about the potential guys in your life right now, their characters, their relationship to each other, where did you meet etc. (got one like that as well, I guess she was sorting it out also for herself)

It’s more concrete: you can send a photo, drawing or a little lightweight object, which is ready to pin up on the wall or put on the fridge door or take in use. (I got some letters with one or two teabags in them and drinking that tea felt like drinking it with the one who sent them)

And now I got some snail mail, too! Although not as many letters as when I was in France.

“Every chance is a possibility” – one of the legendary quotes from the notoriously legendary Finnish former ski jumper Matti Nykänen

In 2004 I had not heard of Skype. I think it was the years 2005-2006 when I first learned there exists such a programme (but hey, I’m that kind of person who got her first laptop in 2007 and even after that spent many periods without internet connection at home) (which was good for the concentration when working on your master’s theses…)

So during the days in France sometimes my parents might have called to my French mobile phone. (I surely wasn’t calling anyone abroad, as it was far too expensive!). With friends abroad I just kept in contact by written messages.

…when talking about mobile phones I must mention that in 2004-2005 (at least) two Canadian exchange students didn’t even have mobile phones. The other one had luckily a landline in her flat! With these people you should agree on meeting well on time, when you met them on lectures, as Facebook or chats were not used …

And now (not only in Poland but also when living in Finland) I’m sharing my Sunday breakfast or evening tea with dear friends from the other side of Europe (“Hold on, I’ll go and get some more coffee!”), seeing how my niece is growing and learning new words … and practicing my spoken English and French!

I think it’s fun to be part of the generation that has lived the period without mobile phones and internet. But I guess when it comes to keeping in contact with the close ones it’s the relationship that matters the most – not the ways, frequency or how long it takes for the message to be delivered!

My brother happened to mention this German webpage some time ago, at the moment I’m really happy he did! The site has quite a good selection of languages. I have also found there very accurate information e.g. the platforms for the train s I searched – and this information wasn’t always that easy to find at the station itself!

However, someone I talked to about this site had found one minor problem with the search: Greek cities are written in Greek alphabet*, so in order to find connections to Athens you should type Αθήνα (I tested copy&paste just for fun but it didn’t work). Search for cities written originally in Cyrillic alphabet seems to work better, you can find the cities in their Latin alphabet form. ( I found Kiev and Kyiv (in Ukrainian Київ) as well as Belgrad (in Serbian Beograd/Београд**).

During the last months I’ve been very grateful to Deutsche Bahn! But I couldn’t help thinking WHY are they maintaining such a service? After all, it takes resources and it seems like no other country or organisation is offering anything like that (if you want info on international trains the Finnish State Railways’s webpage links you to the two All-European websites I put above).

German efficacy! (Good national PR this website, don’t you think?)

“We used to be THE European superpower and we are still big, all the European trains pass by us or if not then we are at least AWARE of their timetables!” (They are actually big and the trains do pass by them.)

There are 82 million Germans, so there are probably quite a couple of million of them travelling in European railways yearly – and I’d think they are assuming they get information&service from their state railway officials.

If somebody has more views on the topic I’d be interested to hear about them!

Enjoy your train travels in Europe!

*he suggested that the timetable data is uploaded straight from the national railways site of each country

**I just found out that Serbian is apparently the only European language using both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets.